October 3, 2010

Sheep to Sweater Sunday n° 46 "Skirting Fleece"

De la Toison au Tricot n° 46 " Trier une Toison "

A number of readers have asked me to explain how I skirt (or sort) a fleece. First, before getting down to the nitty gritty of the subject at hand, perhaps I should say a little bit about the goal -- or rather the goals -- of skirting a fleece. As a spinner, I think that we can talk about two different types of skirting (or sorting) each with different objectives.

To begin with, generally when we talk about skirting a fleece, the main goal is to get rid of any parts of the fleece that are seen to be undesirable and unsuitable for spinning. This type of skirting is the first step when preparing a fleece for spinning. And it is mainly this type of skirting that we are interested in here. That being said, after skirting a fleece to remove unwanted wool, we can then go on to sort the wool into various categories of wool : for example according to the finesses of the wool, the staple length, or the color of the wool. This type of sorting is particularly useful when dealing with a large fleece that weighs 5 or 6 pounds (or more). But when dealing with an ouessant fleece that rarely weighs more than 2 pounds, this this type of sorting would be somewhat excessive due to the small size of the fleece.

So then, let’s get to work & start skirting a raw ouessant fleece. In order to show you how I skirt a fleece, I’ve randomly chosen two fleeces from Dominique Morzynski and his flock of ouessant sheep, Les Lutins du Montana, which will serve as examples.

We will start with the white ouessant fleece of Désirée des Lutins du Montana, a pretty little ewe who won the first prize at the 2010 French national ouessant breeders show (GEMO) in the adult white ewe class.

Désirée’s raw fleece comes to us in the form of a small ball of wool that has been carefully rolled up. This is exactly how a fleece should look.

Normally, when the shearer finishes his work, he will fold and roll up the fleece so that the tips of the fleece are in the inside of the ball of wool and the cut side of the fleece is on the outside of the ball of wool.

On a large, flat surface, we are going to unroll this little ball of wool. It’s really important to work slowly. But with a bit of patience, we end up by finding the shape of the sheep!

First we notice that this is a pretty fleece with very little vegetable matter. Additionally, we have a say that the shearer did his job well : before folding and rolling up the fleece, he took the time to remove any manure tags and other barnyard accouterments that one too often finds in a fleece. This small geste only takes a little time but it does make the spinner’s work easier.

Before skirting the fleece, I recommend that you take a little time to see if you can’t find which end of the fleece is “the head” and which end is “the tail”.

There are two clues that indicate which end is “the head” : first, the wool around the neck area is often noticeably finer than the wool on the rest of the body ; then, quite often there is a small “bird’s nest” of straw and hay at the base of the neck.

The objective of skirting is to remove any parts of the fleece that are seen to be undesirable and unsuitable for spinning. That being said, what you decide to keep and what you decide to discard is a personal choice (some of us are pickier than others!). Also, keep in mind that an experienced spinner can quickly skirt a fleece : after years of experience, you can quickly see what you want to keep or discard. For a novice spinner, skirting can seem more complicated. My advise : if you’re a new spinner it’s better to keep a bit more of the wool than not enough. After all, you can always throw away any wool that you don’t use later.

As for Désirée’s fleece, I only removed a little bit of wool : a bit from the bird’s nest, some from the britch, and a few handfuls of tag wool. Here it is after skirting :

2 comments:

Hi Jody!d Me too! That's why I usually have a pretty hefty amount of wool that ends up on the compost. That's one of the reasons that I coat my sheep : very little of the wool from my flock ends up on the compost. But the fleeces that I get from other breeders .... well there's just more lower quality wool.

Thank you for visiting the Spinning Shepherd!

" Quand on veut un mouton, c'est la preuve qu'on existe. "

Le Petit Prince -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Hello! My name is Diane and I live in Normandy (France).I'm an avid spinner and knitter, and the proud owner of a small flock of ouessant sheep.Come and join me as I share my hand spun yarns, woolly tales and sheepish musings!